Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare multiplayer beta impressions

The Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare multiplayer dropped over this weekend (and is still active through today), and having spent the last few days playing, I’m left feeling a little underwhelmed by the whole thing. I haven’t really been on the same Infinite Warfare hate train that some folks have since the game was unveiled, and I’m still not quite there, but so far nothing about the multiplayer has really got me excited for the upcoming launch of this game. I have zero issues with the aesthetics, the whole robotic future of warfare stuff looks fine to me, but the gameplay just isn’t quite clicking. It’s a little tough to explain without actually experiencing it, but I’m just not having fun so far.

As far as a stress test, technical showcase thing, this beta seems to be successful. Friday was a little spotty when it came to joining a game, but that was pretty well ironed out by Saturday. And the devs/pub did the right thing by extending the beta an extra day for those that weren’t able to play as much as they’d like. Outside of Friday, my time with the beta was smooth. I encountered a little bit of lag here and there, but generally matches ran fine and it took little time to get into a match across all of the modes that were available in the beta.

Speaking of, there was a small selection of popular modes that we’ve seen before. Team Deathmatch is always front and center, but I was happy to see Kill Confirmed and eventually Gun Game as well. Likewise, the small selection of maps here seem solid, but not particularly noteworthy. I’ll chalk that up to having limited time spent with the game though, it’ll take much more playing to really get accustomed to the map layouts and to learn them well enough to speak about their overall quality.

Infinite Warfare has a whole host of options for customization with its MP as well, which is nice and gives everyone something to shoot for. From the onset of the multiplayer beta, you could select between three rigs, which are similar in fashion to the named characters that constituted classes in Black Ops 3. Each rig has specific characteristics and unlockable abilities, but weapon selection is universal across the board, and unlocked as your overall multiplayer level goes up. Guns also level up individually with various add-ons available, there’s a host of different weapon skins and other unlockables, and in-game currency to purchase loot boxes with random items of varying rarity. If there was a checklist of expected first-person shooter multiplayer features, I’d imagine Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare manages to check off nearly all of them.

Again, I don’t think the multiplayer is particularly bad so far, but going into the final day for this weekend’s beta, I’m not exactly dying to play more of it unfortunately. Here’s hoping the full experience grabs me in a way this small slice of the game hasn’t, because otherwise this may be one of the few Call of Duty titles that falls by the wayside for me.